Call Me James

Tags

A View To Kill, Casino Royale, Cold War, Ian Fleming, James Bond

I grew up in the midst of the James Bond movies as a phenomenon. Given my particular age, the first Bond I saw was Roger Moore and, for a good chunk of my life, he was The James Bond.

This, of course, put me at odds with the Bond aficionados, who (nearly) universally found Moore an offense to Connery’s true (Scotsman?) portrayal. I’ll add an interesting side note here. Moore was already being considered to play Bond before George Lazenby’s go in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but various factors conspired to delay Moore’s first effort, The Man with the Golden Gun, until 1974.

In my young mind’s Moore-centric view of the world, Timothy Dalton represented the end of the Bond franchise. I’m pretty sure I still watched them at the theater when they came out, and if I were honest with myself, the reduction in campiness probably made for better movies. The problem was, Dalton just didn’t look or sound like Bond. The arrival of Pierce Brosnan renewed faith in the future of the series and, at the same time, allowed me to accept that Bond could be portrayed by different actors over the years.

Some time in this century, I decided to revisit all of the Bond films – in their original order. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I had seen and, of those that I had seen, which had been on network television and therefore “formatted to fit your screen, to run in the time allotted, and edited for content.” In this exercise, I believe I was able to view every single film to date which, by then, included the reboot version of Casino Royale, with one exception. The odd man out (in more ways than one) is the original film version of Casino Royale, which I have to this date never seen.

Despite fifty-to-sixty years of Bond movies, my conception of James Bond remains rooted in the decade from 1974.  Moore’s tongue in cheek portrayal steeped in the culture of the late 60s and early 70s was where I see James Bond at home. As the series moved into the 1980s and beyond, it began to feel displaced for me. I am obviously not alone; Austin Powers is for many the perfect parody of James Bond. Note that Powers ended his pre-stasis career in 1967.

Up until a week or so ago, I had never read any of the books. This is, actually, a little surprising. I recall a teenaged me griping to my mother about not being able to find good books. When she asked me what I wanted, I said I wanted some kind of spy novel. She produced for me a le Carré title, which was not what I had in mind. I was thinking along the lines of Moore’s Bond. For all of that, I never took the obvious step of reading any of Fleming’s works. Perhaps the Bond movies being what they were, I discounted the source material as equally non-serious.

The remake Casino Royale did much to alter that preconception. Surrounding its release, we were treated to explanations about the deviation of the original film adaptation and the adherence of the new version to the style of the book.

The most obvious departure is the setting of the book. In Casino Royale we get indications that the story is taking place shortly after the end of the Second World War. Later novels peg the time in 1951. We also don’t encounter the super-villains and extra-national organizations that approached parody even before the Austin Powers treatment. Our villain is a rogue Russian agent whom Bond is tasked with simply nudging over the edge rather than allowing him to return to the fold. In the form of SMERSH, he faces an organization based on War-time reality. Fleming merely imagines it extending its reach into the Cold War.

Indeed, one of the keys to understanding the early Bond stories is that Fleming’s personal experience was with espionage during the Second World War. His writing, and some of the other “spy thrillers” of the early 1950s, were ostensibly about the Cold War but likely have had more grounding in the experiences of WWII.

As to the book itself, coming at it knowing only the films, it is far more subdued that one would expect. All the films are action/thrillers, filled athletic chases and wild combat scenes. A single car chase aside, the action in the novel is restricted to the card table.

Having forgotten the ending from the film, I got a little nervous about the extremely lengthy romantic interlude towards preceding the books final climax. If you know what I’m talking about, you’ll know that it eventually falls into place and its context within the book makes perfect sense.

Coming as it did for me, Casino Royale defies the concept that I have for James Bond and his world. It is Flemings first novel, being written before he was a “novelist” by trade. He, himself, criticized his own lack of seriousness with the work. Whatever the merits of the novel on its own, however, it was successful enough to encourage a follow on. It created the character of James Bond, who remains an icon of popular culture almost seventy years after his introduction.

Turn of the Screw

Tags

2018 election, Brett Kavanaugh, civil war, Donald Trump

The other day I read an article which analyzes the prospect of mass, armed violence on America’s near horizon.

I began thinking about it in the context of my recent post where I talked about the sense that people on the left witness an entirely different reality than that of people on the right. I have several times thought to share the above article with her, asking how she would interpret its analysis. To me I think the conclusions sound spot on. She has also expressed concerns that the downward spiral of America’s discourse is irreversible. But does she seem the same causes as I do? Doubtful. Would she agree with the “solutions” presented in this article? Even more doubtful.

I have yet to share this article anywhere but with you, my readers. The problem is, it is a fairly substantial article, much of which talks about the failed policies of America’s progressives.

There is a quote that I am unable to find. I thought it was from this article, but search as I might, I can’t locate it. It may have been in a referencing link to this article, or taken from another context about the same situation. The point, essentially, is that once we descend into violence, the question of who is at fault, who started it, will be of little concern to the participants. Historians may write about the roots of America’s Second Civil War and try to attach some blame, although even then it is more likely they will just bolster the righteousness of the ultimate victors.

It seems apparent that we are already, today, beyond the point where there is an identifiable perpetrator and victim. The reactionary forces within our body politic are prepared to retaliate against the latest attack, regardless of what lead up to it. In this sense, the long discussion of how and why the acts of progressives have become intolerable is mostly irrelevant. Can a liberal reader see through what is essentially an assault on their identity into the analysis that, I would say, makes for the meat of this article?

And what is that?

The author proposes that the 2018 and 2020 elections will be the next catalyst that will propel this country forward into its “new equilibrium.” By that, he means a new stable state that comes after the highly volatile situation we find ourselves in today. That state may take any number of forms but I think it’s impossible that we stay in the current political environment for much longer. Just as the author states that he does not predict the outcome of the elections, only what the results of the various outcomes will be, I also think dwelling on the righteousness of the winners and losers is a distraction from the analysis that he presents.

From hours after the results of the presidential election of 2016 became apparent, the left has focused their efforts on the election of 2018. In that, you may feel they are on the side of the angels, or you may disagree their near-maniacal anti-Trump focus.  In any case, I think we can all agree that a plan and the intent to bring it to fruition indeed exists. Should the left “win” the election in a week or so, every tactic they have employed to get to that end will be, to them, justified. We also know that 2018 is merely preparatory for 2020. The goal of a 2018 victory will be to impeach, or at a minimum obstruct, Donald Trump.

I put “win” in quotes as this is subjective. What is a win for the Democrats? Gaining a majority in the House and Senate? Just the House? Is merely picking up a certain number of “red” seats sufficient? How about for the Republicans. Is merely holding on to the Senate sufficient to be a victory? All this is important because what happens next is less dependent on the political makeup of the resulting government and more upon the various sides’ perception of what happened.

I’ll also take a moment for a bit of an aside. The author uses the terms “the left” and “the ruling class” to be mostly interchangeable. To a progressive activist like my friend, however, these are opposites. I think it is important to consider that a progressive could (and, now that I think about it, probably has) written a very similar article talking about the sinister power grabs of the ruling class and how the reactionary right hands them the means to do that. To the right, Donald Trump is the political outsider, hacking away at the alligators as he attempts to drain the swamp. To the left, he is the perfect example of a corporate overlord, a member of the elitist class that endlessly brushes aside any attempts to constrain, through democracy, attempts to curb their destructive behaviors.

He makes (roughly speaking) a four-branch tree of outcomes, based on Republican versus Democrat victories over the next two elections. Essentially, he predicts all but one will end in warfare. The Democratic takeover of the Presidency he gives as a kind of a default outcome, in that it follows in more-or-less a straight line the path that we are on. He foresees that party and the ruling class, having dispensed with the niceties of civil discourse, now in possession of the full power of State apparatus. They face off against a group, now completely cut off from power, that has learned a hard set of lessons from the “resistance” that put them there.

The article speaks about the fact that self-restraint, the inner control which prevents us from entering into violence against our fellow citizens, has already left the building. From my personal experience, his description of those on the right is accurate. He writes, “The conservatives, among whom the zealot’s taste for taking the speck out of the neighbor’s eye is not widespread, revere self-restraint in principle, but are learning to transgress against it in practice.” In this he contrasts them with liberals, for whom he says restraint is “anathema in principle as well as in practice.”

I think he simplifies a more nuanced situation. I note he uses the word “restraint,” and that is important. Conservatives are apt to talk a good game. Violence in defense of home and family, or even honor, is often talked about and even considered justified. It is but rarely invoked. Liberals often mistake the sentiment that “so and so deserves a good ass-kicking” to imply a propensity to do just that. Yet, it is exceedingly rare because whatever the conservative might think could be done, their sense of higher purpose restrains them.

Progressives on the other hand, I think, define violence a little differently. Screaming in someone’s face or denying a Trump supporter’s humanity is, whatever it may be, not violent. Nobody is shot and nobody is stabbed, so no “restraint” is required. Indeed, screaming a political figure and his family out of a restaurant may feel less inappropriate then the idle comment post-incident that “They better not try that on me, I’m armed.”

Point being, just as the author sees the progressive left as having pushed conservatives over the edge into violence, no doubt progressives themselves see the reverse as true, and the truth of it just as obvious. I make that point, perhaps, to help liberal reader get through the accusatory parts of the linked text. I also think it is why the current downward spiral is unrecoverable – in our minds, we are already reacting to actual violence perpetrated upon us by the other.

Back to those four outcomes. The author proposes that the only chance of peace in our time is a double Republican victory.

A loss in November will cause the left to question their emphasis on “resistance” and the tactics they used against Kavanaugh. Indeed they may temper their approach. In contrast, success in November tells them they are on the right track and need to ramp up their efforts further. His one downside for a Republican victory is that he figures it will lock-in Trump as the standard bearer for 2020 which, in his words, “would add its own level of uncertainty to the outcome.”

Two losses in a row would send a clear message to the left that this country is on the wrong track and put the ball of reconciliation into their court. Having failed to run Trump out on a rail and faced with eight straight years of Republican rule (plus decades of a conservative majority on the Supreme court), they would have every reason to seek a fair compromise. Such a compromise, he suggests, might be found in allowing States to go their own way.

So how would the other side view these conclusions?

Of course, if you are on the right, your only solution is a solid string of victories and every other way leads to disaster. Similarly, I’m sure the left sees the only way to peace via winning in November, impeaching Trump, and then putting Hillary into the White House in 2020. What, though, comes of their consideration of the author’s prediction about the results of that outcome? Do they intend to “crush” the “alt-right,” but see them as such a fringe minority that they don’t matter? Or do they figure conservatives, unlike themselves, will accept reversals at the polls with quiet dignity (and when did they start viewing conservatives so generously)?

These things I would like to know.

Grief

Tags

Battle of Fornovo, Borgia, guns in hollywood, Italian Wars, The Borgias

I finally finished the first season of Borgia. My chances of finishing before the series is pulled is looking pretty grim at this stage. I don’t know how far I’ll get before the end but the transition from one season to another seems a decent place to take stock with what we’ve got.

Season 1 of Borgia ends with the same plot point as Season 2 of The Borgias. Juan Borgia’s body is found, following his murder by persons unknown, and Pope Alexander falls into despair while demanding to know who killed his oldest (remaining) son. The details, including the eventual reveal of whodunnit, differ between the two versions but the main plot is very similar. Contrasting these two isolated plot points tells us a lot about the differences between the series as a whole.

In Borgia, we see Rodrigo/Alexander in anguish. He locks himself away, wailing and smashing things, heard but not seen (either by the other characters or by us, the viewing audience). Cesare finally breaks down his door to find him stripped of his robes and flagellating his naked body. The show relies on the actor, as well as the made-up marks upon his body, to convey the sense of grief. It is done well enough.

Until you compare the equivalent scene from The Borgias. There we see Alexander digging a grave for Juan with his bare hands, soiling his papal robes as he does so. In his mind’s eye he sees Juan, not as he has become – a failure as a leader, infected with syphilis, and addicted to opium – but as his young child. It is one of the more effective and powerfully-emotional scenes I’ve seen on television. Ever.

This small difference emphasizes the difference in production values (read expense) between the two versions. I’m not sure the lower budget Borgia could have pulled it off and, in any case, it would have been a departure from the style of that version.

Borgia, also in that final episode of Season 1, shows some flaws that I’ve noticed occasionally throughout the season. Particularly, the opening scenes feel choppy, as if they’ve been edited down to fit more story into the time constraint of the episode. I also had been coming to appreciate the introduction to each episode by Johann Burchard, the master of ceremonies to multiple popes, including Innocent and Alexander in the series. He begins with the date and a summary of the state of Rome, supported by the “previously” footage taken from earlier episodes. Burchard is critical historically as his records of the papal court provide one of the major primary sources for today’s knowledge of early-modern Rome. It is nice to have the drama framed so easily within the historical context. The problem is, that framing isn’t quite accurate.

Season 1, as we know from those opening titles, spans mid-1492 through sometime in 1494 and covers the election of Alexander VI, the first Italian War, and Juan Borgia’s death. Alas, Charles’ invasion of Italy lasted into 1495 and Juan Borgia survived through 1497. One wonders what, during the production of a historical drama, possesses writers and producers to create such a gap between their own story and reality. I would think it would make everything harder going forward, now that you’re on this alternative timeline.

Beyond that, there were other plot devices with which Borgia surprised me. The historical record of the Borgia family is distorted with the rumors that floated at the time. I prefer Borgia‘s treatment of them, explicitly acknowledging their distorting effect. Naturally, the show is going to need to present definitively events that we don’t know if they were fact, speculation, or deliberate misinformation spread by the Borgia’s political enemies. Nevertheless, there are clearly ahistorical plot points. As an example, the character of Micheletto Corella is, much like in The Borgias, portrayed as a mysterious figure risen from the underworld. Yet it seems more likely that the real figure was a childhood friend of Cesare and from similar social status as Juan and Cesare themselves. What is the common source from which both of these shows borrowed?

While we are comparing and contrasting with The Borgias, the on-screen depiction of the First Italian War is dramatically different from one show to the other. I marveled at the portrayal of the armies in The Borgias, particularly within the context of a made-for-TV series. Borgia didn’t have that kind of money. The Battle of Fornovo is included only off-screen. A minor battle, the retaking a French-garrisoned fortress after Charles’ departure, is displayed with a momentary shot of an infantry clash. “Battles” tend to be depicted by a dozen or so costumed troops simply to convey the idea that fighting has taken place.

It is, nevertheless, good to see the use of firearms portrayed properly. In contrast to The Borgias, which treated firearms like some advanced technological mystery, Borgia properly shows the arquebus in common use. The Borgias had tried to make a plot point out of the failure of the Italian armies to “modernize” and took it too far.

Like the Borgias themselves, I shall race against their clock to try to advance their fortunes during the brief time they have remaining to them on this mortal coil we call Netflix streaming.

Defamation

Tags

actor's age, anachronisms, Borgia, Brett Kavanaugh, Italian Wars, SCOTUS, small world, The Borgias, U.S. Supreme Court

It’s been about a year since I was watching the Showtime version of The Borgias. That show remains available on Netflix streaming to this day but I watched it when I did because of its topicality and because it seemed like the most acclaimed of the several television treatments of the Borgia family story. I had every intention of eventually watching another series, created for European cable/satellite TV, Borgia.

There are plenty of opinions out there on the internet that actually hold Borgia, not The Borgias, as the better of the two series. They were created and aired nearly simultaneously and so comparison is invited at every turn.

Netflix has now forced me to take on Borgia immediately, as the series will not last the month with them. Like the Showtime version, this series ran for 3 seasons, so I fear I will be hard-pressed to complete my viewing in time.

But we do what we can.

Like the Showtime version, we are treated to nipples in the opening credit sequence, giving us a promise of the sexual content to come. Unlike Showtime, that sexual content is not presented to us as the opening scene in the show and, also unlike Showtime, we’re not immediately dealing with hints of incest. Borgia, being a European production, should come with different expectations when it comes to sexuality. It is at the same time both more explicit and less salacious, if that makes sense.

I was also struck early on by the actors ages, and commented on the choice in The Borgias to have a 23-year-old actress play the 11-year-old Lucrezia Borgia. With Borgia also using Lucrezia’s entry into womanhood as an anchor for the opening of the narrative, I note that the use of an 18-year-old actress (and a young-looking one at that) is a significant production change.

Of the two, Showtime clearly worked with the bigger budget. They used more well-known (by Hollywood’s measure, at least) acting talent and their costume and sets are far more elaborate. Outdoor scenes in Borgia seem tight and narrow, probably as a result of fitting them onto a small set with a limited number of extras. Indoor scenes do better, but none have that stunning beauty that shown forth from the occasional Showtime set.

That said, my gut says that this version put more effort into historical accuracy. The scenery is shabbier, yes, but is often portraying poverty and disease. Costumes have less style but (particularly the religious vestments) seem to display a little more variety. Without knowing the details, I get the impression that the different “uniforms” have legitimately different purposes. Likewise the music, which in the Showtime version I heard the occasional anachronism, seems to be correctly matched to the period, especially when the instruments are being played or the singing being done on the screen (as opposed, that is, to background music).

The narrative itself follows a slightly different path. Historicity, in this regard, can be difficult to judge, perhaps more so if, like me, these dramatizations are your first exposure to many of the details of Rome at the end of the fifteenth century. The Borgias featured a cynical Cesare who, from the beginning, commanded the screen and was already working towards seizing power. Particularly when compared to his brother Juan, he clearly was the true heir to Rodrigo. In Borgia, by contrast, Cesare starts as pious and even superstitious, displaying weaknesses and errors that seem to keep him from fulfilling his desires.

This is an intriguing change. From the beginning of The Borgias, it is clear from Cesare’s screen presence (including the look of the actor as well as the focus on his character) that he is going to be the protagonist. Even if we don’t approve of his methods, we know that this going to be the person we should care about. In Borgia, Cesare is difficult to like from the start. In some ways, he seems to be a little more focused than brother Juan, but he is also prone to his own monumental acts of stupidity. Unlike Juan, he tends to fret endlessly over his blunders, reducing his sympathy. I expect it to make for a deeper story moving forward.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

I had this moment of disorientation when watching the conclave in Borgia. This episode is from 2011, but it seems to be speaking very specifically to current events. It probably didn’t help that someone had just sent me an article from 1990 talking about the methodology of defamation as a political attack. Pointedly, the article explains that the practice of “ritual defamation” is universal;

It is not specific to any value, opinion or belief or to any group or subculture. It may be used for or against any political, ethnic, national or religious group. It may, for example, by anti-Semites against Jews, or by Jews against anti-Semites; by rightists against leftists or by leftists against rightists, and so on.

The story of the election of Rodrigo Borgia to become Pope Alexander VI will often dwell, with good reason, on the politics of Rome at the time. As Borgia explains in its introduction, the “crown” of the papacy was more than just the mitre of a high priest. The Pope ruled, as a monarch, over the Papal States, which was a major player among the competing kingdoms if Italy. Add to that the sway that the head of the Catholic Church could wield over all Christians (monarchs and other men of influence), and you are talking about one of the premier secular positions of power in the world of 1492.

The Pope is supposed to be chosen through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is, he is assumed to be divinely selected. However, given the political importance of the position, we know that politics comes into play. Major factionalizations include both the Italy-versus-the-rest-of-the-world faction as well as factions comprised of competing kingdoms within Italy. Within that context the voting cardinals tended to be, themselves, from powerful families and thus voted with the interests and biases of their own bloodlines.

The Borgias focused on outright bribes and Cesare’s role in distributing them. The Borgias also went from the death of Innocent VIII to the coronation of Alexander in one episode. By way of contrast, Borgia takes two episodes for Innocent to pass on and two more episodes to elect the new pope. Also, while a passing mention is made of the bribes that have been distributed, the focus is on the bargaining within the conclave itself. In particular, all sides use defamation to attempt to keep votes away from their opponents.

As described in the article, the veracity of the accusations are often irrelevant. As pointed out recently in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, these political arenas are not courts of law. The point of making heated charges is simply to produce enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt to keep a candidate from getting enough votes for a victory. Uncannily, for his opponents’ most effective attack upon him, Rodrigo Borgia stands accused of attending an orgy as a young man. He is also accused of having Jewish blood. As described in the linked article, however, his real crime is that of being an outsider. As a Catalan, he does not belong among the Italian elite. That he dares to aspire to its heights is sufficient to justify whatever charge is lain upon him.

Plus ça change.

Of Youth I Sing

Tags

Flogging Molly, Ireland

She arrives to beautify,
but slumber now must rest.
Oh my Roisin Dubh
I’ll forever love
the youth you once possessed.

In ’65 I Was 17

Tags

Cold War, FPS, Jackson Browne, left-handed mouse, Men of Valor, MoH, Vietnam

And in ’65 I’m on my seventeenth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

Men of Valor is a First Person Shooter set in Vietnam. It was released in 2004, two years after the wildly-successful Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Men of Valor is an adaption of that game (which had, itself, already released two expansion packs and one follow-on: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault) and, perhaps, a bit of an upgrade*.

Medal of Valor begins its story (once you progress through the obstacle course/training sessions of the tutorial) shortly after the initial deployment of Marines to Da Nang. I played through, so far, the first “Operation”, which takes you up to the start of Operation Starlite.

Just like the Medal of Honor titles, each Operation is broken down into several Missions, separated by cut scenes and (usually) some down time. Within a Mission, progress is saved a number of check points.

Déjà vu. I am about to take out a heavy machine gun position with a difficult SKS shot, although I feel like I’ve done this before.

With this, I am reminded of what I don’t like about this genre. The check points are there as the place you will return to when you are inevitably gunned down. The checkpoint system was original forced upon games by the console world, where “saving to a file” wasn’t an option. It persisted in the PC world in a large part to provide more of a “challenge” to the player, who might otherwise beat a game by saving seconds before a difficult part and then retrying rapidly until you succeed. Because playing typically consists of getting killed, figuring out what killed you, and then figuring out how to get past what killed you, when reloading from the last checkpoint you are punished with the added tedium of working your way back up to where you were. Besides playing to the masochistic instincts of the player base, such a format is necessary to increase the amount of gameplay that you’ll get from the game.

Although the player is meant to feel like he is in an open, three-dimensional world, the game itself is pretty much linear. You are working your way along a pre-determined path and the obstacles you face along the way are fixed, reacting to certain triggers. If it were reasonably doable to make it through the game without being killed, that would severely restrict the amount of play that the game provides. Or to put it another way, once you can successfully complete a portion of the game, there is no reply value. Much of that time-in-game comes from reloading and retrying a difficult portion over and over.

Which then brings to me another source of frustration. I’m sure I’ve encountered this when playing Medal of Honor, but I had mercifully forgotten it. The checkpoints are only “saves” within the context of restarting after being killed. If you decide to wrap it up for the night and play from your save point some other day, you must load from the beginning of the “map” or “mission.” In the screenshot above, I had finally finished the section of the game where I had to clear this village and, as I was thoroughly sick of it, I had no desire to come back to it later. However, right after that, I got myself stuck in another trap. Feeling like I’d already wasted enough time on this for one night, I shut down. Imagine my horror when I was placed back at the beginning of the section that I had finally gotten myself through, only to do it all over again.

Once I calmed down, I could think a little more rationally about the pros and cons of this game. Here and there, I actually feel like I’m playing Medal of Honor with slightly different graphics. For example, in the screenshot above, I find myself using scavenged commie weapons. For whatever reason, I went out on this mission without an M-14 and lacking sufficient ammo for my M-1 Carbine. When the ammo ran out, I had to choose between a wildly inaccurate PPSh submachine gun and the accurate-but-ammo-limited SKS. With the SKS, I had flashbacks to Medal of Honor‘s M-1 Garand with its tormentingly-slow stripper-clip reload. So much so, it really felt like some kind of cosmetic upgrade of the previous model. Likewise, there are places in the game where I feel sure I’ve already done this exact “mission,” but set in Europe, 1944.

Does this look like the bridge in Apocalypse Now? A little?

Another similarity is the reliance on the existing cultural reference points to create familiarity. A bridge looks straight out of Apocalypse Now. Other scenes reference Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

I was somewhat pleased to see snipers in the treetops, having read about this tactic in We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. But only somewhat, as they kept killing me.

A somewhat strange choice (or artistically interesting choice, depending on how you take it) is to include a strong current of racial conflict throughout. Perhaps evident from the screenshots above, I am a black man. This is emphasized in the cut scenes. My unit is also mostly black and some of the casual dialog in-game has the black soldiers harassing one of the white soldiers in the unit. Perhaps the statement it is trying to make will become clearer to me as I progress further. Or perhaps someone is just trying to be astute, clever, and politically correct all at the same time. Let’s include racism, but let’s make it reverse racism! That way, white players can see what it’s like to be… oh I don’t know.

I noticed, in particular, two “upgrades” over the Medal of Honor play. For the first, I draw your attention to the medical icon in the bottom-left corner of the screenshots. Like Medal of Honor, each bullet hit you receive will knock a percentage off of your health unit, upon hitting zero, you are dead and the game halts. The difference this time around is that some hits will result in “bleeding” damage, where your health level continues to drop until you give it attention. If bleeding, you have to bandage yourself by holding down the ‘F’ key until the health loss stops. Bandaging is most effective when you are still and not doing anything else and, of course, it makes it that much harder to shoot at the charging enemies when you are trying to stop the bleeding. Ignore it completely and even a small injury could, fairly quickly, wind up killing you.

The second difference is in the way the “permanent” injuries are repaired. Maybe I’m misremembering Medal of Honor, but I recall that all injuries were repaired by medical kits, either scattered around a map or “dropped” when an enemy went down. In Men of Valor, the random smattering of medical kits is still a part of the game, but most of the healing (and ammo resupply, for that matter) comes from “searching” downed enemies. Finding that an enemy was carrying canteen can give you a small boost in health and finding a medikit on a fallen foe gives you a large one. As I said, maybe its bad memory, but it changes the feel when you have stop and deliberately search the enemies rather than just charging through a room sucking up “loot” as you go.

Also one shout-out of appreciation. The mouse-button issue is, while not quite non-existent, very easily configurable. My current version of Medal of Honor also works in this regard, but you never know with some of the aughts titles. I was really happy not to have to fight with this particular problem before I could get started playing.

So overall, is this game a waste of time or not?

It is a frustrating game. There are certainly places where, over and over, you have to go back to the check point and try again, only to do even worse on the retry. However, at least so far, the obstacles can be overcome – the game is not impossible. It is also, of course, not realistic. Even a successful run through a village may have shot and injured, almost to the point of death, three or four times but, courtesy of your enemies and their unused medikits, you can completely patch yourself to full health. All this in a matter of a few minutes.

On the other hand, and focusing on the time frame of this Operation, it illuminates a part of the war that, so far, no other game has captured. In the early months after the invasion, “nothing happened” at least from the standpoint of significant operations. That didn’t mean that Marines were idle. They went on patrols, engaged in firefights, and men were injured and killed. This may not be the best representation of this period of the war that I could come up with, but its just about the only one I’ve got.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles. For another first-person view of the war, this time from the cockpit of an airplane, you man want to read on to the next article.

*I’ve not played Pacific Assault, so I can’t really compare features between the two titles. What looks to me like a new feature in Men of Valor may be old hat.

Up or Down?

Tags

Chuck Rosenberg, Cold War, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, Vietnam 1965 Combat Operations, Vietnam Combat Operations, wargames

This is the sixteenth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.

The next two Operational Art of War scenarios I’ve decided to take on move the focus both up and down a level from my previous try. Vietnam 1965 Combat Operations, Vol. 1 is a more focused take on the initial ramp up of troops. Focus, both in terms of the scale and the shorter time-frame, but also in other ways that I’ll expand upon below. Boonie Rats 1965-1972 is a higher-level look, again both in the expansion in scale and by its attempting to encompass the entire war. At least, that is, the entire war up until the historic U.S. withdrawal in 1972. The authors of both scenarios describe how they based their work on the Vietnam 1965-1975 board game, each in their own way.

TOAW Scenarios

Vietnam 1965-1968

Hex side: 5 km
Turn length: 1 week
Unit: Battalion/regiment

Vietnam 1965 Combat Operations, Vol. 1

Hex side: 4 km
Turn length: 1 week
Unit: Company/battalion

Boonie Rats 1965 – 1972

Hex side: 10 km
Turn length: 1 month
Unit: Regiment

Vietnam 1965-1975

Hex side: 10 km
Turn length: 2 turns per season
Unit: Battalion/regiment

Let’s start, as I did, with Vietnam 1965 Combat Operations, Vol. 1. If not evident from the title, this is an extensive, multi-part scenario development effort attempting to model the full length of the war, but doing so in bite-sized chunks. The creator has, so far, progressed only through the end of 1970, but intends to eventually continue through 1975 and the evacuation of Saigon. Volume 1 takes you from the Marine landings on March 8th through to the 31st of July.

This scenario is designed only for play as the U.S. against the forces of communism, which are designed to be handled by the programmed opponent; switching sides or playing against another human player is not supported.  That right there differentiates it from many from the TOAW library, which emphasizes scenarios balanced for competitive play against other players. Even beyond that, though, this one is different than, not only the other Vietnam scenarios,  but pretty much any other scenario I’ve played in TOAW.

Units are put into place or withdrawn according to their historical deployment to Vietnam. This is done to a finer level of detail than the other scenarios I’ve played so far. For example, the Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which is the organization which lands in Da Nang on March 8th is withdrawn on May 6th and reconstituted as the Marine Amphibious Force. This, in conjunction with the smaller unit scale, means a very detailed order-of-battle, yet still for the entire Vietnam theater. Furthermore, it is a historic order-of-battle that tries to be very precise.

Mid-April and not much going on. I am tasked with establishing a Special Forces base at Phuc Tuc. My Helicopters fly them out.

In contrast to the Vietnam 1965-1968 scoring, this scenario uses the standard score-keeping system for TOAW to determine victory. Control of the population is simulated by scattering victory locations across the map, control of which represents enough of a presence to control those hearts and minds in the vicinity. Each on-map victory point is the equivalent of 10,000 souls distributed using the population numbers from Vietnam 1965-1975. Additional victory hexes are located in the neutral countries (Laos and Cambodia) or in North Vietnam. Capturing any of these victory locations is an instant loss for the U.S. side. In other words, they serve simply to balance out the South Vietnamese victory locations, which are open to control by either side, as well as to (somewhat) enforce the pressure to remain within the international borders of South Vietnam.

The biggest difference in scoring, though, is that your score can be augmented by successfully completing missions. Each turn specifies certain missions, usually described in a very detailed fashion. Completing those missions gains you additional victory points. The player is also free to forgo those mission points and repurpose his units towards controlling more victory locations or defeating the enemy on his own terms.

June and July of 1965. As you play, you can read about unit deployment and withdrawals, be assigned missions, or just read about what else was going on in the war outside of the game.

To play this scenario, I needed to copy the scenario notes to a tablet and have that next to me* as I executed each turn. For the most part, it is very instructive. With units arriving all over the map, it is otherwise very difficult to keep them in a historical context. Playing is also very painstaking. In a purpose-built game, these missions would probably be pop-ups in game with some graphical indication of where they are and where they are supposed to go. Using an offline document, I have to go through each mission’s details, finding the location of the designated unit and the mousing over hex-after-hex until the popup says I’ve found the right target location(s).

Another unique aspect in this one has to do with the “house rules” for this scenario. Most of them have to do with the air assets in the game. Because there is no way in TOAW to designate things like runway length and suitability of an airstrip for different kinds of aircraft, the designer recommends that you always keep your aircraft at the base where they are initially deployed. Furthermore, he asks that you not use the air assistant, not set any units to “interdiction” or “air superiority,” and that you set no more than 10% of your air units to “combat support.” The result of all this is that you, the player, must specifically identify where on the map you are going to use your air assets. Like much else in this scenario, it makes for much more deliberation when planning and fighting a battle.

Par for the course.

I wasn’t quite sure how to play this. Initially, I tried to fully use my ARVN units (at least the few that were under my control) to take victory locations beyond those specified in the missions. In particularly, I was trying to “secure” the areas around Saigon and Da Nang. A little further into the game, I realized that any unit that might be needed to satisfy a mission would not, in fact, be available when I need it if I had laready set it off on a task of my own choosing. So by the end of the game I was much more focused on following the instructions as given and keeping the immediate area around my forces clear of enemies. The result was a draw, as shown above.

I think the purpose of structuring the scenario this way is first, to allow the player to see-by-doing what the historical utilization of his assets were. Then, perhaps on replay, he could see if varying that script would produce better results. This scenario, which ends before Operation Starlite, probably should not have a lot of aggressive, ahistorical attacks coming from the player. I don’t know what it might take to win this one, and I probably don’t want to be replaying it so as to find out. In that vein, though, having already worked my way through Vietnam 1965-1968, I had a certain familiarity with where some of the tough situations that I had faced in that scenario and thus a sense of the layout of the country.

Scared but Not Alone

In contrast to the above, Boonie Rats 1965-1972 owes an even greater debt to Vietnam 1965-1975. It began as another attempt to port that boardgame to the computer. The most obvious carryover is the map, which uses the same scale as the boardgame. But as the creator iterated in his development, he found areas to improve upon the source material, both in revisions to the map and, especially, in revisions to the order of battle.

The end result is a bigger-picture version of the war than the other scenarios highlighted so far. However, in stark contrast to Vietnam 1965-1975 and some of the other larger-scale TOAW adaptations, the order of battle follows exactly the historical deployment. So there is no variability to deployment based on management of morale, as in the original board game, or on high-level decisions (see Vietnam 1965-1968), or on random events a la Fire in the Lake. Each unit arrives for you when it did back then. The design notes tell of extensive work in getting that order of battle as accurate as possible and I can appreciate that.

Colorful! The American units are color-coded by their withdrawal schedule.

Playing the game, it doubles down on one of the problems with Vietnam 1965-1968. I suspect the idea with month-long turns was to approximate the turn length in Vietnam 1965-1975. The problem with doing it this way is that for the board game, the time in between was abstracted. The correct interpretation is not that an “operation” took half-a-season to conduct, at least not in most cases. It may be an operation lasting only a few days. But units are only prepared to embark on one-to-two large-scale operations during a season, in between which they must rest, refit, and be reinforced. Translating that to TOAW, but adding an extra turn, may get the “rest” periods about right, but it also makes the movements that took a week or so to get in, fight, and get out, last multiple months within this scenarios structure.

Perhaps it is the attempt to model the abstracted turn length but, for whatever reason, the game is actually configured to run 1 week turns. There is a separate reckoning of the calendar reckoning that informs you that each is really one month, doing so in the “news” portion of the game. As a result, if we look at the screenshot shown above, although it says “March 29th, 1965” up in the corner, we are really looking at some time in June. It is mildly confusing and, again, I question if it really is an effective way to do what is intended.

In order to fit my experience in with the other games I’m looking at, I only played up until the beginning of November, at which point I am (historically speaking) about to hit some major U.S. operations. I’ll return to this scenario, to see how it is doing as a strategic representation, after catching up to the in-game date within other more detailed games and scenarios. In contrast to Vietnam 1965-1968, I’m not seeing units deployed ahistorically early. This scenario keeps the schedule tight. Like before, however, I do see a much more aggressive war being fought when I consider what is going on relative to the historical actions. Referring again to the above screenshot, I’m looking at June 1965 and I’ve got NVA regulars in the vicinity of Saigon. Feeling the pressure, I’ve undertaken a major operation to disperse them and this includes the participation of elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (that forest green 4-3 counter) as well as some Australians (baby blue). While these units were, truly, in country by June, this is still months away from Operation Starlite and even longer until November’s Operation Hump (historically a use of 173rd’s forces for a major operation). While I share some of the blame, having engaged newly arrived troops so quickly, I also think I’m facing an NVA opponent that is accelerating the schedule. Unlike may other Vietnam War treatments, I can’t accelerate my deployment to match.

The scenario is not terrible, but I’m not sure its as enjoyable or instructive as the others available. I will say this. Score-wise, I seem to be doing better and with less stress. Here, the victory conditions don’t involve balancing commitment and morale and therefore don’t have the kind of sudden death conditions from Vietnam 1965-1968. Instead, and I have to speculate here, the tougher part will come at the end of the game when the player is asked to maintain control over country with the U.S. forces being reduced to zero. My decent score, I just have to add, persists despite losing an aircraft carrier.

I assume the loss of a carrier would have been a political catastrophe back in 1965. I probably shouldn’t have even risked it. The thing is, with the extra-aggressive operations on my plate, I found myself short of artillery support. To compensate, I moved a carrier group into gunnery range. I was figuring that the escorts could help me out by lending some big guns with relatively little risk. You might notice from the screenshot that I’m playing with the Version IV of TOAW. One of the changes was to try to make naval combat more realistic and part of that was allowing larger ships to take damage rather than just disappear when the get a “bad roll” during combat. So I felt even more secure with this gambit than I would have in Version III. Nevertheless, there must have been some torpedo boats lurking around because I lost a carrier and an aircraft wing while lobbing shells onto the shore.

I don’t have anything really bad to say about this scenario, at least not so far. However, I does point out why, perhaps, games focus so much on the morale and political aspects of the Vietnam War. It just seems like if, no matter what happens in battle, the U.S. forces are going to roll right in on this preordained time table and then be pulled back out on the withdrawal table, aren’t we missing one of the most important variables in this war?

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go on to the next article, for a look at Vietnam as First Person Shooter.

*Normally, I would simply keep the manual open in another window and tab between them as necessary. However, you may recall my complaint about TOAW‘s problems when more than one program in running.

There Will Be Diamonds

Tags

Africa, Blood Diamond, Donald Trump, guns in hollywood, Jennifer Connelly, mushroom, Sierra Leone Civil War

Maddy: ‘The world is falling apart and all we hear about is blowjob-gate.’

Danny: ‘When was the last time the world wasn’t falling apart, huh?’

Coming of Netflix at the end of September is Leo DiCaprio’s political/action/thriller Blood Diamond. It is a drama set in 1999 during the latter years of the Sierra Leone Civil War.

For many years, I was not inclined to watch this one because I figured it was going to be too preachy. It’s not that I am opposed to making the diamond cartel the villain of this story; that whole industry seems pretty smarmy to me. I fully agree with the point, made in the movie, that it is the market manipulation of the major diamond distributors that drives the price of diamonds so high for consumers. Consumers that buy the diamonds largely because they are so expensive and, therefore, must be valuable. I don’t really want to hear it all when I’m trying to enjoy a mindless thriller, though.

One online review suggested that it is best to go into this film without preconceived expectations. So that is just what I did. I played the movie not expecting event to enjoy it all that much. As such, I was pleased with what I took in as a straight-forward, based-on-true-events action movie.

The political message, of course, has to be front and center. The controversy in the film largely post dates the issues and their resolution. Nevertheless, the film’s release brought broad public attention to an issue that most consumers of diamond jewelry probably didn’t think to much about. It didn’t get too, too heavy handed until the very end, and I suppose I could forgive that.

The lion’s share of the praise (at the time) went to DiCaprio’s performance. Both he and his costar were nominated for Oscars. He was decent in what, after all, was kind of a stock role. The hard-hearted mercenary comes to find his own humanity, and so forth. One scene that I, in particular, appreciated was near the end. Most of the fight scenes I just sat back and watched the action. Toward the end, I decided to count the rounds out of Leo’s rifle. Not only did he do a magazine change at the appropriate time, but I thought it was pretty well executed with good trigger discipline. By my reckoning, he either knows what he is doing or had some pretty good instruction.

All-in-all another one to that was worth enjoying before it was gone.